


bury me (as it pleases you)

by Blue_Rive, We_deserve_rainbows



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Selectively Mute Toy Soldier (The Mechanisms), hm idk how to tag this but ts has to do a lot of things without consent, jonny i am begging you to have a shred of emotional intelligence, jonny: no not like that, jonny: tell me about your trauma, not very polished we wrote this at 3 am, ts: [does], would be h/c but jonny is a disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27466459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive, https://archiveofourown.org/users/We_deserve_rainbows/pseuds/We_deserve_rainbows
Summary: jonny notices how still it is, wood drawn into tense knots in clenched fists and shoulders hitched, and frowns; there's something here he's missing, isn't there?
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & The Toy Soldier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 63





	bury me (as it pleases you)

jonny is mad it's not singing like it should so it makes him tea and he pushes it aside with exasperation and says 'i don't  _ want _ tea, toy, and anyway nastya's gotten into the kitchen again it's probably no good' and it's  _ failed _

it’s standing stock still because oh no, what happens now. every other time it’s been told ‘i don’t want tea’ that phrase has been followed by something it didn’t like much at all, so what does it do now?

he pushes his chair back and gives it a look up and down, trying to see if there's something in its machinery making it glitch; because what other explanation would there be for their new robot, his fucking replacement apparently, acting so strange when asked to sing? he notices how still it is, wood drawn into tense knots in clenched fists and shoulders hitched, and frowns; there's something here he's missing, isn't there?

the toy soldier looks at jonny, its new boss, its ‘captain’. it would say that it didn't care much for the way that he was looking at it, it would say that that look reminded it far too much of the antiques shop; it  _ would _ have. but that would require it to admit that it had the capacity to 'care' about anything. and it didn't. so it just stood there.

jonny snaps his fingers, trying to focus its attention. its gaze has been fluttering about frantically, and there's a moment where it's just staring off into the distance past him, like it's remembering something. when he does that, and says 'soldier, look at me', it snaps back into position with a salute and smile, and stays silent in anticipation of his next order. 'soldier, tell me what's going on with you,' he decides upon.

and hm. that's an order. right, well. what  _ is _ going on with it? ‘you don't want tea.’ 

jonny nods. ‘i don't want tea. so?’ he’s more confused than anything else and his patience is wearing thin. ‘just tell me what's going on.’

the toy soldier looks at him and salutes. ‘it's not good when people don't want tea, it means they're angry, or they want something else.’

its tone is cheerful as ever, but jonny takes stock of the way it's standing again.  _ is it... nervous? scared? that couldn't be right. _ 'elaborate? who's 'people'?'

‘well! the widow didn't want tea sometimes!’ and it cannot  _ stop _ talking but oh no. it doesn't want to think about the widow, it doesn't  _ want _ to and yet, orders are orders. but if it had a mind it would be racing and if it was allowed to its hands would be shaking. "that wasn't good at all!" it keeps going on, rocking on its feet despite of itself, their voice increasingly strained and high-pitched but with still an attempted cheerful cadence to it. 'you know, she was- or she said she was, but she wasn't- my fiancée, or i was supposed to be, or- i don't know, it was all dreadful confusing most of the time, and tea, tea was normally alright, but sometimes she'd want me to-' 

'okay okay okay,' jonny says, 'stop, or i mean- you don't have to keep talking. if you don't want to.'

‘i don't!’ it says. when the order to 'keep talking' was lifted it stopped talking, but the look that jonny was giving it.. the toy soldier had lots of experience cataloguing and reacting to emotions from Real People, but the look on jonny’s face was not one it was familiar with, maybe.. pity? it didn’t know what to do with pity. ‘captain! what am i supposed to do! why are you looking at me like that?’

_ i don't, _ it had said, so it  _ had _ wants and boundaries and in ordering it jonny had... violated those. his mind goes to all the times he had ordered it before, where it had frozen up when asked to do something and he'd forced it. that hadn't been all it as a machine having an irritatingly specific prerequisite for the syntax of orders, had it. the toy soldier's words bring him back to the present. it's still just as strained and flappy as before and, and it just wants some sort of order to follow, there's a reason it likes war, it doesn't want to have to deal with  _ confusing _ things. 

'sorry about making you talk, toy.' he stumbles through his apology, and the toy soldier has no idea what to do with it. 

'what do you mean?' it asks him, in pure bafflement.

'i just-' he sighed and fiddled with his hands, he was talking to something with feelings and he had violated  _ something _ . boundaries, even if it didn't say that they were boundaries they  _ were _ weren't they? 'i made you say something that you didn't want to an-' 

it cut him off with laughter that seemed higher pitched and more nervous that the laughter he heard from the library sometimes. 'don't be silly, captain! i don't 'want' anything! i'm a toy!' 

jonny frowned. 'no but you said that you didn't 'want' to keep talking?’

the toy soldier froze. 'oh!' the puzzle pieces slotted together in its mind. jonny was being confusing because it had failed! it shouldn't have told him that! it wasn't supposed to be the sort of person that didn't want to do the things it was supposed to! that made sense, when people were acting strange it was never good, and so it neatly put away this odd pitying-nicety in to its mental space for 'reactions that happen when i do something wrong'. 'i'm dreadfully sorry, my dear jonny! i can-' a falter, it wouldn't  _ like to- _ 'i can tell you more, if you like!'

jonny was not a good person, he was sadistic and, on more than one planet he was considered a 'murderous psychopath’. But more than that he was curious, he had always been poking around in places that he probably shouldn't, and he didn't want to make anyone do anything they didn't want to, but hey it was  _ offering. _ 'are you sure' he asked. 

yes, it  _ could _ tell him more, if it meant not being confused or scared anymore, 'yes.'

‘right, where should we begin, old chap-’ it stumbles over its next words, telling him as many details as it could recall, until its stolen voice catches in its throat- it's remembering now, it doesn't want to- and it's reduced to the simple signs ivy's taught it, and it's so shaky that they just come out into nonsense, and jonny doesn't look any happier with it- if anything, it seems worse now, oh dear, it must have made some other mistake along the way.

it must make this better, it tries to sign 'i'm sorry' it wants him to know that it’s sorry, that it didn't mean to make a mistake. jonny knows the signs that it's trying to make, it had taught them to nastya all those years ago, as she sobbed and died over and over again. but nothing so simple was happening now, just something that he thought was a really advanced robot until today trying to stutter out its trauma for him,  _ because of him _ This wasn't what he wanted, he didn't want to see it shake and try to apologize over and over again, he.. he didn't know what to do.

'stop- stop, you don't-' he ends up with, and it cuts off immediately, pulls back up from where it'd been curled into itself and head ducked despite its best efforts to keep in correct posture, and tries to halt its nervous fluttering but is worrying at its hair and hands still shaking, and  _ oh shit that was an order, _ jonny realizes, and  _ oh dear, was telling him the wrong thing too? it'd thought he'd wanted that, _ the toy soldier panics.

it stopped, it sat there, feeling the ripping and tearing fear in its chest that it wasn't supposed to be  _ able _ to feel. it was promised that it was just a robot, and it  _ was _ ! and yet, the panic in its soul was as real as ever. not that you could tell, it was as still as a wooden robot could be (wooden robots can be very still). and it's not like the toy soldier itself would admit any of this, it was still holding onto its 'pretend' feelings. 

jonny hadnt meant to order it, honestly, it's just what he was used to! but seeing it, straighten its back and stop the sounds that reminded him so much of nastya and ivy, he was scared, he was doing this to it, but how could he fix it, he had already screwed up  _ so much. _

he paused for a moment to think and reformat his words so they couldn't be construed as an order. it had been doing what he asked, even when he hadn't ordered it directly- was it worried about what he'd do if it didn't?- he makes sure that he's not asking it to do anything it might not like to, either. 'toy- i'm sorry for scaring you. what are you- why aren't you alright- sorry, you don't have to be alright, if you're not that's okay-' and he was still stammering through his words, even with planning. he didn't  _ like _ emotions. he never knew how to deal with them. 'i'm not going to hurt you.'

the toy soldier had never heard that before. There was never any reason for someone to..  _ reassure _ it. They hadn't cared about it, not really, sure, they cared for what it pretended to be, or what they thought it was, or what value it had, but never about  _ it _ . Jonny was confronting it  _ having _ feelings in a way that it wasn't used to, but he was worried, he was  _ worried _ about it. the toy soldier was not sure what to say, ‘you're not?’

its tone is a tentative and fragile thing, hands still shaky. 'i swear, i'm not going to- not on purpose.' it can hardly process this. if he  _ is _ being nice, and it was wrong when it thought he was angry, why does he care? it's only a toy. 'i don't understand.'

'i don't-' jonny cut himself off and took his hat off, holding it at his waist to fiddle with the strings, 'i mean, i didn't mean to hurt you,' jonny sat down, looking down, and trying to bite back tears. he didn't mean to hurt it, but it was hurt, and boy was it hurt. the toy soldier still stood stock straight, squeezing its hands together and trying to gain back its voice. the voice that wasn't its to begin with, but the one that it used. the one that it needed to use. but it couldn't

'i-' it tries to stutter out loud, but anxiety overwhelms it and it keeps with signs. 'i just-' -flaps around its hands loosely, keeps stopping in the middle of signs and rewording- 'so? does it matter that- hypothetically, or- that i was hurt- i wasn't hurt, i can't be.'

it continued with its stuttering signs, 'i cant be- or rather- i musnt be hurt,' jonny looked at it, he didn't know what it meant, and he said such, 

what did it mean it 'mustn't be hurt' it could be hurt, it obviously was hurt.

its signs continued 'i musnt be hurt, that's not right, that's not possible'

'if i can be hurt that means some things would be wrong or bad and i'm not a person so i can't be so they make sense', it explains all in a rush of strung-together gestures. this is basic to it, maybe not in so many words but certainly in the back of its head, and jonny doesn't seem to grasp the fundamental idea that it's Not Real.

jonny looked down at his hat, ‘what you said bout the widow seemed pretty bad..’ he trailed off, he didn't want to remind himself of what he had made the toy soldier tell him but it seemed  _ wrong _ to him, seemed wrong what she had done.

the toy soldier seemed to tense up. its signs were hasty. 'no, no i'm not real so it doesn't matter.'

jonny hesitated, he wanted to correct it but he didn't know how much that would help, and until that day he hadn't considered it real either. ‘it does matter though, doesn't it?’ 

‘no- no, it can’t-’ it flails its hands uselessly. jonny keeps talking nonsense and it doesn’t like it. it just wants him to tell it what to do, or let it run off and not have to talk to anyone.

jonny lowers his gaze and fiddles with his hat, ‘it seems, in my opinion, that you can feel things,’  _ which is a shock to me,  _ ‘and that’s what matters when ya think about whether someone did good or not.’ 

the toy soldier sits silently. its hands seem timid, it doesn't want to believe jonny, so it won't. ‘but my feelings are pretend.’

‘but ya do  _ feel _ right? how’s that pretend?’ jonny says.

‘i- because  _ i’m  _ only pretending, so it doesn't matter when i feel things.’it has never been able to pretend right, never been able to be the person it was supposed to be. ‘and so it doesn’t  _ matter _ \- even if i can't pretend right-  _ it doesn't matter.’  _

this doesn’t seem to convince jonny, and he gives it a strange look before he says, ‘what if it mattered to me?’

‘i don’t want to-’ it took a moment. it not wanting to do something had been bad before, he hadn’t liked that- or, now that it thought about it, he’d just gone all strange, hadn’t told it that it was wrong. ‘i don’t want to talk more about this, jonny, please.’ 

jonny- well, he’s not exactly going to press the issue, is he? not after this conversation. he nodded slowly, that was fine, he would collect his thoughts and bring this up later (maybe, if he had the courage to talk about emotions)

‘okay.. yeah that's fine, toy soldier.’ 

it stood up quickly, snapping a sharp salute before hurrying off.

**Author's Note:**

> we decided to end it here but there is a forbidden end scene where ts goes and has a breakdown and then gets some soup and blankets and a nap


End file.
